THERE WAS no way of getting a view of 5 Geug Place without driving up and parking outside, and there was no way an aging Fiat Punto could park on that street and not draw unwanted attention. The question was how long Darian and Sholto could sit there eyeballing the gates to Simon Sutherland’s house before the presence of the working class made the locals, and their security staff, jittery.
Sholto turned onto Geug Place, its end hidden by the tall trees on either side. The foliage was intended to keep the large houses behind the tall gates hidden from the road, and they mostly served their purpose well. You had to get close to see that there were driveways behind those gates and no matter the strength of your prescription glasses you wouldn’t be able to spot the houses themselves. They parked in the passing place closest to the gate of Simon Sutherland’s house and sat watching it across the road.
Darian said, “I can see half a gate and nothing else.”
“You’re not looking close enough then. I can see half a gate and at least three security cameras, maybe four if that thing in the tree there isn’t a bird…It flew away. Okay, three.”
“Not a surprise, is it? All the houses round here probably have a paparazzi of cameras outside for security. And someone who doesn’t want to leave the house is probably paranoid about other people getting in.”
“See, for all the swings you’ve taken at it there you’ve still missed the point. Security cameras mean a security team watching the pictures, but we were told only the uncle, the driver and the housekeeper ever get into the house. If someone’s seeing us and thinks we’re suspicious, who comes to shoo us away?”
“They might have security staff somewhere near here, in another building.”
Sholto shook his head and said, “All the other buildings on this street are other people’s giant houses.”
“You could squeeze a few small buildings onto Sutherland’s land behind that gate. He doesn’t want other people in his house but surely they’re allowed into other buildings nearby if he never leaves his own.”
“We’ll see what shows up, but be ready to pretend you’re sorry for causing alarm.”
Enough time passed for a security team to arrive from streets away but no one appeared and they sat in silence watching a closed gate. It did occur to Darian that the joke was rather on them, sitting watching nothing while security guards watched them from a comfortable office somewhere nearby. He didn’t mention that to Sholto because why turn boredom into depression?
After twenty minutes the gates began to open slowly and Sholto said, “Put on a hat and hang onto it, we’ve got action.”
There were long seconds as the electric gates slid back and then nothing. No car emerged. Instead, eventually, a short woman in her fifties with the black hair and tanned skin of a Caledonian walked out and marched straight for them. She had thin lips and small eyes, a round shape to her. She stepped beside the passenger window and rapped on it with her knuckles with just enough strength to suggest she was giving real thought to putting her fist through it.
Sholto cleared his throat loudly, the internationally recognized signal that he was going to do the talking, pressed the button to drop the window and leaned across Darian to smile out of the window as he said, “Can we help you, love?”
The woman took a shocked step back from the grinning mug, scowled and said in an accent that retained only trace amounts of its original Panamanian, “Don’t call me love because I have no love for you. If you want to help me you can tell what you’re doing parked out on the street like this.”
“We’re looking for a young woman who’s gone missing, name of Freya Dempsey, thirty-one, about your own height, shoulder-length blond hair, pretty, wouldn’t say boo to a goose if she had time to kick it in the face first. Have you seen her at all?”
“You’re police?”
Having decided to be honest about their reasons for being there Sholto was compelled to stick to the risky strategy. Besides, one thing he had told Darian repeatedly they mustn’t do was pretend they were policemen. Impersonating the law was a good way to piss off the police in half a nanosecond and an ingeniously stupid way to ruin your own investigation.
“No, we’re not police, we’re independent researchers, but we are working in conjunction with the police on this case.”
“I haven’t seen this woman. Why are you looking for her here?”
“You work for Simon Sutherland, don’t you? It was actually him we wanted to see, just to find out if he might have seen her, or if he might have heard anything about her.”
“Heard anything about her? Don’t be so stupid, he couldn’t have heard anything about this woman, you’re wasting your time and mine and I am not a person who has time to sit looking at a gate all afternoon.”
Before the housekeeper could leave Sholto said, “William Dent had contact with Freya Dempsey, and we know William Dent comes to this house, he delivers food here.”
Darian chipped in, “Quite a lot of food for one person.”
The housekeeper, determined to win some part of the argument, said, “Some of that was cleaning materials for me to look after the house. It’s a large house to look after.”
Sholto said, “Can I ask you your name?”
“My name is Olinda Bles. I am resident here; I have had my passport for nearly thirty years so you can’t threaten me with that.”
“I certainly wasn’t going to threaten you, Miss Bles, I wouldn’t think of it. The last time I threatened a Panamanian lady I had to put my food through a blender for the next three or four days, and you don’t want to know what that many Chinese takeaways look like blended.”
“Huh, well, maybe you deserved it.”
“Well, yeah, I probably did. Listen, Miss Bles, it’s a bit silly us talking through a car window out on the street like this. Can we not come in and talk to you and Simon in the house?”
The look she gave him suggested he had just invited her to the International Space Station for a cup of tea. Before she gave what seemed like an inevitable dismissal of the idea she stopped and looked up and down the lane, thinking about things she had no intention of sharing.
“You say you’re working with the police?”
Sholto nodded with the conviction of a reluctant liar and said, “In conjunction with them. We’re working…in conjunction with them.”
“Maybe it would be right for you to come in. Mr. Sutherland has done nothing wrong, and this will stop you coming back because you won’t be welcome back, but you must respect that he has very strict rules in his house, and it’s necessary that you keep to them. You will only be allowed into one room and you must leave nothing behind, you understand?”
Having not planned on parting with anything for the privilege of entry Sholto said, “Sure, yeah.”
They both got out of the Fiat and followed Olinda Bles through the gates and up the curved, cobbled driveway to the house. Behind them Darian heard the electric gate begin to slide shut.